Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor Part 10

And here is Harvard Square, where stand the buildings of the famous college:

"A few houses, chiefly old, stood around the bare Common, with ample elbow-room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia general who had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. People still lived who regretted the unhappy separation from the mother island. . . The hooks were to be seen from which swung the hammocks of Burgoyne's captive redcoats. If memory does not deceive me, women still washed clothes in the town spring, clear as that of Bandusia.

Commencement had not ceased to be the great holiday of the Puritan Commonwealth, and a fitting one it was--the festival of Santa Scholastica, whose triumphal path one may conceive strewn with leaves of spelling-books instead of bay."

James was the youngest of four brothers and two sisters, a handsome boy, and his mother's darling. He always thought he inherited his love of nature and poetic aspirations from her, whose family was from the Orkneys--those islands at the extreme north of Scotland.

His father was a strikingly handsome man, gracious and of rare personal qualities, and a faithful pastor over his flock. Often he took his youngest son on long drives with him, when he went to exchange pulpits with neighboring clergymen. Because of his wide family connection, and his father's position, James saw not a little of New England society as it was in those days, pure Yankee through and through.

CHAPTER II

AN IMPETUOUS YOUNG MAN

Young James was sent first to a dame school, as a private school for very small children kept by a lady in her own house was called in those days. But when he was eight or nine he was sent to a boarding school near Elmwood--going, of course, only as a day scholar. This school was kept by an Englishman named Wells, who had belonged to a publis.h.i.+ng firm in Boston which had failed. This teacher was very sharp and severe, but he made all his boys learn Latin, as you may see by reading the learned notes and introductions to the "Biglow Papers,"

supposed to have been written by "Parson Wilbur," but in reality by Lowell himself.

We sometimes find it difficult to believe that a great man whom we admire was ever an ordinary human being, with faults and errors like our own. But when we do find natural, childish letters, or read anecdotes of youthful naughtiness, we immediately feel like shaking hands with the scapegrace, and a real liking for him begins.

Lowell was so reserved in after life, and so very correct and elegant both in his writing and in his deportment, that when we come across two letters written at about nine years of age, badly punctuated and badly spelled, but displaying all the natural spirits of a boy, we begin at once to feel at home with him and to have a genuine affection for the man we had before only admired as a very great and learned author. Here are the two letters just as they were written. It will be a good exercise for you to rewrite them, correcting the spelling, punctuation, and other faults.

Jan. 25, 1827.

My dear brother The dog and the colt went down to-day with our boy for me and the colt went before and then the horse and slay and dog--I went to a party and I danced a great deal and was very happy--I read french stories--The colt plays very much--and follows the horse when it is out. Your affectionate brother,

James R. Lowell.

I forgot to tell you that sister mary has not given me any present but I have got three books

Nov. 2, 1828.

My Dear Brother,--I am now going to tell you melancholy news. I have got the ague together with a gumbile. I presume you know that September has got a lame leg, but he grows better every day and now is very well but limps a little. We have a new scholar from round hill, his name is Hooper and we expect another named Penn who I believe also comes from there. The boys are all very well except Nemaise, who has got another piece of gla.s.s in his leg and is waiting for the doctor to take it out, and Samuel Storrow is also sick. I am going to have a new suit of blue broadcloth clothes to wear every day and to play in.

Mother tells me I may have any sort of b.u.t.tons I choose. I have not done anything to the hut, but if you wish I will. I am now very happy; but I should be more so if you were there. I hope you will answer my letter if you do not I shall write you no more letters, when you write my letters you must direct them all to me and not write half to mother as generally do. Mother has given me the three volumes of tales of a grandfather

farewell Yours truly James R. Lowell.

You must excuse me for making so many mistakes. You must keep what I have told you about my new clothes a secret if you don't I shall not divulge any more secrets to you. I have got quite a library. The Master has not taken his rattan out since the vacation. Your little kitten is as well and as playful as ever and I hope you are to for I am sure I love you as well as ever. Why is gra.s.s like a mouse you cant guess that he he he ho ho ho ha ha ha hum hum hum.

Young Lowell's life was so very quiet and uneventful that we have very little account of his boyhood and youth. We know, however, that he was fond of books and was rather lazy, and did pretty much as he pleased.

A poem which in later years he dedicated to his friend Charles Eliot Norton gives a very good picture of the life at Elmwood:

The wind is roistering out of doors, My windows shake and my chimney roars; My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me, As of old, in their moody, minor key, And out of the past the hoa.r.s.e wind blows, As I sit in my arm-chair and toast my toes.

"Ho! ho! nine-and-forty," they seem to sing, "We saw you a little toddling thing.

We knew you child and youth and man, A wonderful fellow to dream and plan, With a great thing always to come,--who knows?

Well, well! 'tis some comfort to toast one's toes.

"How many times have you sat at gaze Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze, Shaping among the whimsical coals Fancies and figures and s.h.i.+ning goals!

What matters the ashes that cover those?

While hickory lasts you can toast your toes.

"O dream-s.h.i.+p builder! where are they all, Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall, That should crush the waves under canvas piles, And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles?

There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes, While you muse in your arm-chair and toast your toes."

I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore, My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar; If much be gone, there is much remains; By the embers of loss I count my gains, You and yours with the best, till the old hope glows In the fanciful flame as I toast my toes.

Lowell entered Harvard College when he was but fifteen years old, very nearly the youngest man in his cla.s.s. In those days the college was small, there were few teachers, and only about fifty students in a cla.s.s.

CHAPTER III

COLLEGE AND THE MUSES

Soon after he entered college, young Lowell made the acquaintance of a senior, W.H. Shackford, to whom many of his published letters of college life are addressed. Another intimate friend was George Bailey Loring, who afterward became distinguished in politics. To one or other of these men he was constantly writing of his literary ambitions, always uppermost in his mind.

Josiah Quincy was president of Harvard when Lowell was there, and afterward Lowell wrote an essay on "A Great Public Character," which describes this distinguished president. In it he refers to college life in a way that shows he thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Almost every one," he writes, "looks back regretfully to the days of some Consul Plancus. Never were eyes so bright, never had wine so much wit and good-fellows.h.i.+p in it, never were we ourselves so capable of the various great things we have never done.... This is especially true of college life, when we first a.s.sume the t.i.tles without the responsibilities of manhood, and the president of our year is apt to become our Plancus very early."

In another of his essays he tells one of the standing college jokes, which is worth repeating. The students would go into one of the grocery stores of the town, whose proprietor was familiarly called "The Deacon."

"Have you any sour apples, Deacon?" the first student to enter would ask.

"Well, no, I haven't any just now that are exactly sour," he would answer; "but there's the bellflower apple, and folks that like a sour apple generally like that."

Enter the second student. "Have you any sweet apples, Deacon?"

"Well, no, I haven't any now that are exactly sweet; but there's the bellflower apple, and folks that like a sweet apple generally like that."

"There is not even a tradition of any one's ever having turned the wary Deacon's flank," says

Lowell, "and his Laodicean apples persisted to the end, neither one thing nor another."

It did not take young Lowell long to find out that he had a weakness for poetry (as his seniors sometimes spoke of it). Writing to his friend Loring, probably at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, 1836, he says, "Here I am alone in Bob's room with a blazing fire, in an atmosphere of 'poesy' and soft coal smoke. Pope, Dante, a few of the older English poets, Byron, and last, not least, some of my own compositions, lie around me. Mark my modesty. I don't put myself in the same line with the rest, you see.... Been quite 'grouty' all the vacation, 'black as Erebus.' Discovered two points of very striking resemblance between myself and Lord Byron; and if you will put me in mind of it, I will propound next term, or in some other letter, 'Vanity, thy name is Lowell!'"

And again, in a letter to his mother, he says, "I am engaged in several poetic effusions, one of which I dedicated to you, who have always been the patron and encourager of my youthful muse.

If you wish to see me as much as I do you, I shall be satisfied."

This is Mrs. Lowell's answer to the last wish. She and Dr. Lowell were then making a visit to Europe: "Babie Jamie: Your poetry was very pleasing to me, and I am glad to have a letter, but not to remind me of you, for you are seldom long out of my head.... Don't leave your whistling, which used to cheer me so much. I frequently listen to it here, though far from you." In later years Lowell would often tell how he used to whistle as he came near home from school, in order to let his mother know he was coming, and she seldom failed to be sitting at her window to welcome him.

Early in 1837 Lowell was elected to the Hasty Pudding Club. "At the very first meeting I attended," he writes to his friend, Shackford, "I was chosen secretary, which is considered the most honorable office in the club, as the records are kept in _verse (mind,_ I do not say _poetry_). This first brought my rhyming powers into notice, and since that I have been chosen to deliver the next anniversary poem by a vote of twenty out of twenty-four."

Not long afterward he writes to his friend Loring, "I have written about a hundred lines of my poem (?), and I suspect it is going to be pretty good. At least, some parts of it will take." And after a few lines he goes on, "I am as busy as a bee--almost. I study and read and write all the time." A little later he writes a letter to Loring in Scotch dialect verse.